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This paper extends academic debates occurring in the discursive intersections between childhood studies and tourist studies. Drawing on theoretical concepts devised by Mikhail Bakhtin and Erving Goffman, it employs a critical discourse analysis that focuses on the representation of tourists in selected travel-themed episodes of three popular children's television series. This study investigates how travel experiences and practices of touristic consumption are discursively constructed and interrogates how this tourist discourse is implicated in relationships performed by children and adults or authority figures in these narratives. The findings imply that children's travel-themed television narratives both challenge and reinforce cultural assumptions about tourist behaviour. This paper highlights how literary devices such as carnivalesque humour and anthropomorphism are employed to convey cultural messages and touristic themes. It also demonstrates that critical discourse analysis is an effective framework for explaining and understanding the various social interactions, roles, and relationships portrayed in these narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the increasing interest within childhood studies towards critically reconsidering fundamental categories such as 'child-actor' and 'context', this paper explores what happens when the aspects of space and time are explicitly included in an analysis of enduring relationships between children and adults in foster care. With the help of the conceptual tool-set of agential realism the paper explores the potential of an 'relational ontological' analytical framework as a methodological contribution to childhood studies and particularly foster care research. This is illustrated by working analytically with two interview excerpts from a larger study about everyday relationship practices, defined as 'kinning', between children and adults within foster care. In engaging child–adult relationships as mutually constituted with elements such as space and time, multiple kinship practices within foster care are unfolded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

These two very different but complementary discussions address two different "registers" of my thinking in my paper on patients who "live in airless intrapsychic worlds." Harris is most interested in the meta-theoretical and historical contexts and frames of my theory and clinical approach, viewing my contribution as an example of various broad trends in contemporary relational psychoanalytic thought. Shaw, by contrast, engages with my particular insights and clinical/theoretical framework for understanding and working with patients whose struggles very much resemble and overlap with the struggles of the adult children of "traumatically narcissistic" parents, which his seminal work has focused on. In my Replies I voice my appreciation of each of their unique perspectives on my ideas, and engage with each of them regarding certain differences in our theoretical and clinical sensibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children are generally encouraged to tell adults about bullying. Although telling can be effective in ending bullying, adults do not necessarily respond in a way that is helpful. Previous research has rarely included victims' own thoughts and feelings regarding what adult actions and reactions are experienced as positive and helpful, and which are experienced as negative and unhelpful in managing bullying situations. This paper reports on interviews with bullied youth, with the overall aims of describing adults' responses to bullying from the victimized youth's perspectives and discussing how the youth experienced these responses. The analysis comprised grounded theory, emphasizing the victimized youth's points of view. When adults became aware of bullying, they responded in three ways; verbal, physical or avoiding/ignoring. Responses that included increasing adult presence were typically experienced as helpful, as were responses whereby the youth felt adults listened without blaming the victim for the bullying or, listened without excusing the behaviour of the youth that bullied. No response was depicted by the participants as unambiguously helpful although when adults avoided or ignored the bullying it was never helpful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deploying an everyday life approach, this article focuses on the kindergarten meal, defined as a space in which humans, materials and discursive elements interact. The article identifies and discusses two co-existing perspectives on the everyday meals that emphasise children as future beings and here-and-now beings. Through the concepts of smoothing and striation the paper discusses how these perspectives produce different mechanisms of regulation and agency, and position the eaters differently. The paper emphasises kindergarten mealtime as an ambiguous space that does not offer simple discussions about good and bad meal situations. The paper thereby adds to the existing literature within children’s geographies which emphasise interactional, relational and material aspects of children’s lives. It does so by revisiting some concepts, striation and smoothing, that has been used to explore children’s spaces and child–adult relations, but argue that these concepts describe ambivalent and complex processes in children’s and adult’s everyday lives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates adult–child interaction in the early years of education. The intention is to understand how children's initiatives and practitioners' responses support and/or hinder children's agency. Our ethnographic data include 150 h of video data supplemented by observational field notes from a Finnish Early Childhood Education (ECE) centre with eight five-year-old children and two ECE practitioners. The video data were analysed abductively by using an Interaction Analysis method. The children's initiatives were found to manifest in several modes, namely asking a question, suggesting, challenging, refusing and ideating. The responses to these initiatives by the ECE practitioners included accepting, accepting after a rejection, adapting, rejecting or ignoring. The analysis points to ways in which adult–child relationships are negotiated in everyday activities, showing the relational nature of agency and suggesting that the ways in which adult engages in the child's initiations are an intricate part of children's agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of the Foundation Stage and its associated legislation has constituted a radical innovation that is transforming early childhood education. In this paper we show how the Effective Provision of Pre-school Education (EPPE) research programme continues to contribute towards achieving these improvements in practice. In focusing upon the EPPE programme's influence upon pedagogic practice in particular, the paper draws predominantly upon the research findings and recommendations associated with our qualitative case studies. This work was first published in the Researching Effective Pedagogy in the Early Years (REPEY) report in 2002, and in the EPPE Technical Paper 10 in 2003. Practitioners respond positively to research when it is focused on specific teaching and learning contexts and practices. The EPPE project therefore applied Environment Rating Scales to identify the quality of educational provision, and used multilevel analysis to isolate the independent variables of most significance in explaining variations in the progress and development of young children during their time in pre-school. The multi-level analysis identified 'good' and 'excellent' centres, based on measurable child outcomes. Twelve of these centres were selected for in-depth qualitative case study enquiries that both extended and triangulated the quantitative analysis. This paper shows how the qualitative findings, as well as some of the data that they have been drawn from, have subsequently been applied to provide the practical guidance and exemplar resources needed in the development and improvement of early years educational practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The consideration of child-centred participation in childhood research is a topic that draws heavily on human rights, and participatory childhood research is performed in a variety of ways. The paper explores issues of adult-child roles in early childhood education with an intention to involve young children in the research as much as possible with reference to Hart's ladder of participation. A drawing-elicited interview was conducted with four children, 3–5 years of age, regarding their views on favourite adult professionals. The children were encouraged to express themselves through drawing and stories, while the researcher strove to follow child-led initiatives along the way. In the process, the children started to generate crazy stories, to laugh, and experiment with the researcher's authority and engage in playfulness. The analysis points to ways in which adult researcher–child relationships are negotiated in research, suggesting that the adult engages in playful interactions with children in order for true participation and sharing of perspectives to take place. The study emphasises how improvisation, share of control, and playful interactions with children are important elements to consider in participatory early childhood research because it is crucial in forming a research relationship with young children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to articles in the issue is presented on topics including the application of the Classroom Assessment Scoring System in Classrooms Serving Students with Emotional and Behavioural Disorders, reliability and validity of the Pupil Behaviour Questionnaire, and the outcomes of a systematic review of literature on the narratives that young people use to communicate depression.

Over the recent years there has been a shift in the field of early childhood research to involving young children in the research process. A vast body of literature [Evans, P., & Fuller, M. (1996). Hello. Who am I speaking to? Communicating with pre-school children in educational research settings.Early Years,17(1), 17–20; Clark, A. (2004).Listening as a way of life. London: National Children's Bureau; Clark, A., & Moss, P. (2001).Listening to young children: The mosaic approach. London: National Children's Bureau; Clark, A., & Moss, P. (2005).Spaces to play: More listening to young children using the Mosaic approach. London: National Children's Bureau; Thomson, P. (Ed.). (2008).Doing visual research with children and young people. Abingdon: Routledge; Farrell, A. (Ed.). (2005).Ethical research with children. Maidenhead: Open University Press] discusses methods to be used with young children in research by means of participatory methods and listening to children's voices. A number of researchers mentioned throughout the paper have offered creative and innovative research tools that enable young children to participate in research. While recognising the responsibility to keep the discourse around children's participation alive, there is a need to problematise it as well as the issue of participation of young children is a complex one which requires continuous critical refection. Thus the enquiry I conduct here employed grounded theory and aims to examine the paradigm of children's participation in research. It is suggested in this paper that although participation is a vitally important element in researching young children, the discourse of children's participation should be focused additionally on ethical praxis of the research which should revolve around six key layers: intersubjectivity, indivisibility, phronesis, parsimony, equilibrium and finally the power of relationships and interaction between children and adults. As a consequence of this enquiry I conclude that all methods become relevant to research with children when ethical praxis characterises the nature of the project. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the initial ‘moral panic’ surrounding children's access to the Internet at the end of the last century by analysing more than 900 media articles and key government documents from 1997 to 2001. It explores the ambiguous settlements that this produced in adult–child relations and children's access to the Internet. The paper then revisits the policy and media debate a decade later by examining the Byron Review, Digital Britain Report and media coverage of these, in order to explore how these settlements have been negotiated, resisted and transformed over the subsequent period. In so doing, the paper asks whether it is time to reframe the debate about children's occupation of online public space, less in terms of ‘care’ for children's needs that tends to result in exclusionary and surveillance strategies, and more in terms of children's rights and capacities to engage in democratic debates about the nature of an online public space in which they are already participating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on data from a preschool-based ethnography that examined both teachers and children, this paper explores gendered elements of adult–child interactions in the preschool classroom. The author describes a methodological approach that acknowledges the provision of helpfulness as a common, everyday expectation that the children had of their teachers, enacted through what she calls the 'ideal carer role'. Adopting the role allowed her to gain insight into the everyday expectations of children and adults within the shared classroom culture, as well as some contexts in which children utilised adult power. Reflecting on the adoption of the role, the author also explores the ethics of enacting care, helpfulness, discipline and pedagogy as part of an ethnography of adult–child relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well documented that ongoing social connection between the young and the elderly increase the sense of well-being of both parties. However it may be difficult to maintain and cultivate intergenerational relationships in which physical, temporal, or social distances exist between grandparents and their grandchildren. This paper outlines findings from an ethnographic research study which explores the nature of intergenerational play and interaction across a distance. Our aim is to understand playful engagement as a means for designing technologies that will support intergenerational play across a distance. The paper highlights examples of data produced by a small number of Australian families using cultural probes. This data originates from personal scrapbooks, the daily exchange of special items via a 'Magic Box' and from interviews with participants. The scrapbooks and 'magic box' methods, in particular, encouraged the exchange of a range of thought-provoking and non-traditional media. Much of this media was exchanged with a view to encouraging play or playful activity; however there were serious issues of family history, culture, and storytelling which underlay the selection of particular items. Items exchanged between distributed households included feathers, dolls, toys, food and letters. While all the exchanges were in some way indicative of the special relationships which existed amongst these diverse families, there are a number of themes which arise across the families. The paper illustrates that intergenerational play and communication are intrinsically intertwined with a range of themes including family history, culture, and storytelling; and familial ideas of magic, science, and fun. It is anticipated that the next phase of the research will produce suggestions for technological prototypes which might help to further support intergenerational exchanges across a distance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Social & Cultural Geography is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper presents a model of continuous exposure to 226Ra by water consumption over a 55-year period. The effects of 226Ra concentration in drinking water were investigated. Reaching the peak at the age of 16, the assessed effective dose has shown that children are more sensitive to radiation than adults. It has been found that consumption of 226Ra-rich water during certain period of life increases consequent effective doses. The earlier the exposure, the higher amount of 226Ra could be retained causing the higher values of effective dose later in life. However, long-term exposure to 226Ra in drinking water as well as consumption of 226Ra-rich water during a certain period of life does not indicate the appearance of malignant diseases in the year of exposure and later in adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intergenerational programs have proliferated in community and educational settings, yet research on their effects and impacts lags (Kaplan, 2002; Kuehne, 1998/99), and the benefits and learning that occur for participants are under-theorized (Abrams and Giles, 1999; Smith and Yeager, 1999). Similarly, insufficient research has been reported on the learning that takes place in environmental education programs. In this paper we focus on the relationship that developed between community elders and elementary school-aged children during the first year of an intergenerational environmental education project. Our goal is to better understand these experiences so we can sustain participation and develop programs rich in rewards for elders and children. We are particularly interested in the nature of intergenerational learning that occurs when children are brought together with community elders for environmental education that is integrated into a school program. Granville and Ellis (1999) propose that for, a program to be defined as intergenerational, it must show a benefit and value for both generations and "demonstrate an improvement in the quality of life for both, and from that, an improvement in the quality of life for all" (p. 236). We concur with these criteria and designed a program linking community elders with farming backgrounds with one class of 18 grade-seven girls for the purpose of fostering environmental consciousness. In this paper we focus our attention on the learnings of participants in order to understand the mutual learning that occurs in an intergenerational environmental program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflective functioning refers to the essential human capacity to understand behavior in light of underlying mental states and intentions. The construct, introduced by Fonagy, Steele, Steele, Moran, and Higgitt in 1991, and elaborated by Fonagy and his colleagues over the course of the next decade, has had an enormous impact on developmental theory and clinical practice. This paper introduces the construct of parental reflective functioning, which refers to the parent's capacity to hold the child's mental states in mind, and begins with a review of Fonagy and his colleagues' essential ideas regarding the reflective function. Next, the applicability of this construct to parental representations of the child and the parent – child relationship is considered. A system for coding parental reflective functioning, which will serve as the organizing framework for this special issue, is described. Finally, the three papers that make up this special section are introduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines some problematic methodological and ethical issues associated with in-depth qualitative research with children. The discussion has wider resonance for qualitative studies of young people in ‘rural’ contexts. Particular ethical issues arise when researching with children, which are underpinned by children's relative powerlessness in society. With this in mind, the paper considers substantive strategies to promote ‘empowering research relations’, drawing upon an empirical study with children in primary school spaces. Re-theorisations of identities and power as fractured, dynamic and contextual, suggest that research is comprised of specific moments or ‘research performances’. It is argued that developing empowering research relations involves negotiating such performances in ways that contest, or transform, dominant societal relations between children and adults. In this paper, I consider some of the specific, embodied performances involved in my research, to expose some of the complexities of power relations and negotiations within space. Bringing to light particular moments emphasises that power relations between children and adults are not reducible to the powerless and the powerful. It is also demonstrated that research performances are influenced and constrained by expectations placed upon adult and child practices in society and institutional spaces, and by researchers' own unconscious reproduction of dominant identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a researcher's account of the qualitative methods used in a research project which aimed to establish how children define and make sense of the concept ‘family’, from a sociological perspective. Research was carried out with 183 children aged between 8 and 14 in schools in two parts of eastern England; a rural area and a large town with a significant population of British Muslims originating from Mirpur and Azad Kashmir in Pakistan. This paper aims to contribute to growing debates about methods and methodologies for working with children. The paper gives the background to the study and then describes the methods used. It then discusses the issues of working with children from minority ethnic backgrounds. It explores some ethical considerations, focusing on issues of informed consent. The paper concludes with a brief reflection on the researcher's role in research with children and discusses children's views on being involved in a research project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his "Airless Worlds" paper, Steven Stern (this issue) is pinpointing and articulating what the author of this discussion has found to be one of the most challenging problems in working with certain psychotherapy patients – the relentlessly enduring obsession some traumatized people have with their traumatizing parent. In an agonized expression of disorganized attachment, these patients are held hostage by their unrelenting anger with and despair about the "negating" parent they have or had. Stern vividly describes how the negated, toxically objectified adult child, trapped in an externally derived identification, cannot mourn the tragedy of not having (or not having had) an affirming parent. The author extends Stern's generative thinking to include reflections on the role of psycho-education in clinical work with this group; and further ways of helping these patients develop a durable experience of a self of their own. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Social & Cultural Geography is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper advances an approach, 'child as method', as a resource for interrogating models of development in childhood and education. Kuan-Hsing Chen's (2010) book Asia as method has generated interest across childhood and educational studies. Here 'child as method' is presented as a related intervention. Just as Asia as method (re)considers the status of the national and transnational, so 'child as method' helps explicate the ways 'child' and 'development' are linked across economic, sociocultural and individual trajectories. The example of translation is discussed in relation to sociocultural approaches and how together these might inform childhood and educational studies debates. The notion of 'method' at work (as framework, technique or narrative) is also clarified as informed by feminist and decolonisation approaches. It is argued that 'child as method' offers strategies for resisting abstraction and remaining attentive to forces and relations of (re)production at issue within adult-child and child-state-development relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The parental presence as therapy agents, namely as a medium and support for the therapeutic process, is one of the paradoxical parameters of working with children. Parental presence serves as a reminder of the need to find a balance between inner and outer reality. The door that is closed in the therapy room leaves a parent on the other side but at the same time provides the child’s inner world with more latitude to reveal itself. This paper examines the fabric of relations created in the therapeutic parent–child–therapist triangle (analogous to Britton’s conceptualisation of the parent–parent–child link). How does this triangular connection affect the ability to be with the silent self (Winnicott) when the parent remains (tangibly and symbolically) on the other side of the therapy door? This paper presents two clinical examples to illustrate the complex fabric of relations created in the therapeutic parent–child–therapist triangle and the interactions between the internal and external reality of the parent–child relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses Arlene Kraat's state-of-the-art report on communicative interaction and highlights the diversity of approaches used to investigate social interactions in the Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) field.

This paper draws on observations of challenging interactions in work with young people to show how relations between young people and youth workers rely on a process of sharing control. I explore what it means for individuals to exert agency in this process, when actions are inter-dependent and ‘of the moment’, and consider the relational dimensions of expressions of agency. I conclude by considering the implications for those working with young people perceived to be challenging and for conceptualising children's (and adults’) agency in understandings of child–adult relations within childhood studies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As children's mobilities increase so does their engagement with the social worlds beyond the home and school. This paper examines the contacts that children aged 10/11 years had with adults as they moved beyond their local neighbourhoods to visit swimming pools, cinemas and the city centre. Their reports contain accounts of problems with individual adults and with adult-imposed, or supposed, restrictions such as those relating to age and 'stranger danger'. The findings suggest that the children's initial feelings of anticipation and excitement in moving into and through the public world were replaced by a greater awareness of divisions between childhood and adulthood. Setting these findings within the context of discussions on the purpose of travel and the nature of movement this paper draws children more fully into debates about connection and disconnection and mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to create a heightened awareness of the purpose and processes of seeking informed assent1 from young children when attempting to undertake collaborative research projects. This holds particular weight where the research project has the intention for children to hold the lead, or shared, agency with adult researchers. Acknowledging the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the current thinking about the child as an agentic being, the authors believe it is timely to create a context for professional discussion in relation to how genuine partnerships can be formed with children as research collaborators. It would appear that the process of seeking the child's informed assent (as opposed to just their assent) to participate in the research project is critical. In concluding with a discussion about significant aspects to consider when seeking informed assent from a young child, the authors also reflect on perceived obstacles which may impede this process of collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The power imbalance between adults and young people in research relations has been well documented, including the necessity of adopting appropriate methods when working with young participants. However, the actual spaces and places in which research occurs remains relatively neglected within children's geographies, despite its methodological significance and the important ethical and spatial issues it raises. The purpose of this short article is to offer an intervention into the ways in which the spaces/places of research, even the very small, almost insignificant sites, have to be considered as integral to research planning and implementation. Drawing on recent school-based research with young teenagers, the paper will demonstrate how a storecupboard became constructed as an important research space/place within the school. As an alternative, liminal or 'thirdspace' the storecupboard allowed for a more nuanced understanding of teenage practices and performances than previous classroom-based research encounters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine the influence of gender, sibling characteristics and birth order on the schooling attainment of school-age Egyptian children. We use multivariate analysis to simultaneously examine three different schooling outcomes of a child having 'no schooling', 'less than the desired level of schooling', and an 'age-appropriate level of schooling'. Estimation results show strong evidence of gender, birth order and sibling characteristics on schooling attainment, with female and rural children particularly disadvantaged. Interestingly, our results show adverse effects on the schooling outcomes of first-born male children. Finally, we show that an improvement in parental education has large, positive and significant effects on the schooling attainment of children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I seek to explore the idea of the otherness of childhood. I suggest that there are considerable differences between the becomings of children and the becomings of adults. In the face of these a number of questions need to be asked about adult-childhood relations in society and about academic approaches to children and childhood, particularly in terms of representing childhood and the implications of such representing. The paper sets out the idea of otherness, locates this within current debate about the crisis of childhood, and then argues that non-representational approaches might be particularly relevant to progressing children's geographies. These approaches stress modesty, practice, experimentation, messiness, creativity and openness. As we age, childhood becomes another country, a disputed territory of memory and meaning. Its true geography is quickly forgotten, giving away to an adult-imagined universe. The contemporary adult vision of childhood has become so distorted as to render it opaque, and this opacity is seriously affecting how children grow up today. (Brooks 2006, pp. 4-5) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the second of two that examine the paradoxical relationship of the child to the liberal notion of the subject. Together they explore the range of contexts in which children's relationship to parents and other caregivers raise questions about the nature of the subject qua individual, and highlight the potential for a ventriloquist discourse around the child in which political projects are mobilized by neo-liberal and neo-conservative groups that purport to speak for the child. The first paper examined the emergence of two contradictory images: the 'knowing' fetal subject and the confused child; the second paper explores particular forms of presencing and absencing of the child in relation to parental rights and questions of social entitlements. Both papers speak to the contorted somatography and topography of the child-as-subject that is emerging at an historical juncture when children's rights are being mobilized to undermine the gains made by a range of heterodox subjects. They point to the limits of liberal constructions of the subject in struggles for emancipation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inability of the child to represent his or her own interests as a legal subject (by definition), and the continued interest of the state in the child as a futurity or resource locks the child in an eternal pas de deux: the child continually approaches the possibility of 'personhood' but never achieves it. In the past 40 years, in western nations the child's legal personhood has been simultaneously invoked and constrained: through a growing array of persons and organizations that, as an exteriority, purport to 'best represent the child'; and through an ever more finely gradated mapping of the child's interiority - which filters the child's voice through a range of interpretive theories, and mechanisms. In this myopic and hyperopic reading of the child, the child's voice disappears. This paper is the first of two examining the relationship of the child to the liberal notion of the subject. In the case law explored around fetal rights and custody issues in the United States and elsewhere we find a paradoxical situation where the 'fetus' is granted a more authoritative voice in terms of what it 'wants' than is the child, whose wishes are perpetually called into question. Together these papers raise questions about the nature of the subject qua individual. They highlight the potential for a ventriloquist discourse around the child whereby neo-liberal and neo-conservative groups that purport to speak for the child mobilize their own political interests. Who speaks for the jaguar? Who speaks for the fetus? Both questions rely on a political semiotics of representation. Permanently speechless, forever requiring the services of a ventriloquist, never forcing a recall vote, in each case the object or ground of representation is the realization of the representative's fondest dream. (Haraway, 1992, p. 311) Why is it just at the moment when so many of us who have been silenced begin to demand the right to name ourselves, to act as subjects rather than objects of history, that just then, the concept of subjecthood becomes problematic? (Harstock, 1990, p. 163) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we propose an approach to investigate, in the North-west of Portugal, the parents' behaviour at birth and during the first year of life of their children. We compare the heritage, specifically the beliefs and traditions, with the changes that resulted from the recent and deep cultural transformations that have taken place in Portugal in the last few decades. In parallel, we tried to determine if the parents' behaviours, based on beliefs and traditions, can affect the children's health. We based our investigation on standardized interviews with 76 mothers of one-year-old children (born between January and December 2001) who lived in two parishes of Vizela city. This is a territory where a more traditional way of life prevails than in other territories of the centre and south of the country, where there is a strong attachment for religious and social values and where the influence of the ancestral traditions is still alive. The paper concludes that cultural heritage can have important impact on individual health. Health professionals, who work in primary care and in hospitals, must be aware of the responsibility they have to change this scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The frequency with which children are exposed to domestic violence is unsettling. Children's exposure to domestic violence can have adverse effects on their functioning, including the promotion of emotional and behavioral difficulties as well as other difficulties. A number of factors, such as the age of the children when they are exposed and the psychological well being of their mothers, may have mediating and moderating effects on the outcomes for children. Although interventions have been based on the individual, family, and community, few interventions have combined these approaches. Given the widespread effects of domestic violence, interventions for the effects of domestic violence should be framed within an ecological framework. This paper reviews the current issues concerning children's exposure to domestic violence and discusses interventions within an ecological framework that may be applied to counteract the adverse effects suffered by children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The realities of the ethno-sectarian conflict have dominated the analysis of social problems within the context of Northern Ireland (NI). As a result of this, issues such as non-conflict related childhood risk have received less attention than in the remainder of the UK. However, with the rapidly changing agenda of the Peace Process there is now the momentum to take a broader approach to examining Northern Irish society. This paper examines children's own experiences of growing up in rural NI and explores their own and adults' perceptions of the risks that they encounter and the resulting constraints placed on children's activity outside the home. It is evident that the legacy and reproduction of ethno-sectarian conflict still influences notions of fear and mistrust of “ an ethno-sectarian other”. However, as shown within this paper these fears run in parallel with other fears that are constructed around concerns over ‘everyday’ risks that are evident in the range of outdoor play practices reported by the children involved in the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intention of this article is to expand some of the contexts and some of the conceptual and methodological trajectories presented Philo's (2003) paper. In particular I explore the relationship of adulthood and childhood as articulated through memory and how this may impinge upon the practices of adults researching into, and writing about, childhood. The key and complex question of the otherness of childhood is raised through the questioning of the extent to which adults can imaginatively re-enter childhood. Differing forms of memory, and how these may interconnect with emotion and imagination in writings about childhood are explored as a means of trying to make connection with the conditions of childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Typically enmeshed in the ‘voice’ perspective within children’s participation debates, there are currently sporadic insights into designer–child creative dialogue. Drawing on the findings of a Leverhulme Trust-funded research project, this paper articulates moments of dialogue between architects and children in spatial design processes, whose spatial and symbolic qualities help to understand the interactions and meeting of cultures. Several authors have discussed the transformational potential for adults and children to ‘co-author’ identities in dialogical contexts. The paper builds on this body of research to suggest that design dialogue offers the space, literally and metaphorically, for children and architects to participate together. Identifying the qualities of the dialogic design space as potentially present in children’s and adults’ everyday cultures and interdependent relations, it is proposed that this dialogical framework might diversify architects’ and children’s roles in the design process and enrich practices and perceptions of design participation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of International Journal of Early Years Education is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper reports on a pilot study of the social interactions between two children labelled with special educational needs and their peers in an early years setting. Data from play observations and staff interviews are used to examine the dynamics of friendship groups that the two children have developed and the way that they attempt to make new connections with other children. Comparisons between the two children's interactions with their recurrent playmates and less familiar peers are drawn and the significance of their agency in making decisions about developing relationships is highlighted. A theme that also emerges is that staff facilitating rather than directing interactions between the two children and their peers has the most positive impact. Areas for further investigation are suggested including the range of relationships that children identified with special educational needs establish with their peers and the nature of adult support that most effectively supports friendships between all children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the lens of Heideggerian’s Being and Time, this paper examines the world of ‘the they’ for twenty-first century children, highlighting perceived power figures in their lives. Exploring philosophically how the falling of a child’s Dasein from its primordial state into ‘the they’ culminates in an inauthentic presentation of self, it will then describe how spiritual educators might encourage a turning of the tide, allowing children to be critically aware of contingent influencers and to act upon them from a position of authenticity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the ways in which social worker practitioners conceptualise childhood and the significance of this for developing social work practice. The data was generated through qualitative semi-structured interviews and group discussions with practitioners who were working directly with children in child protection or children’s service centres in Iceland. The interviews formed an initial stage of an action research study, informed by young people who had interacted with social services, and designed to develop practice in line with the young people’s views and expectations. The findings indicated there were contrasting and co-existing conceptualisations that had different implications for children. On the one hand, conceptualisations of children as problems and children as incompetent appeared, from practitioner’s accounts, to have undermined children’s ability to present their own concerns and maintain control over what happened to them. In contrast, conceptualisations broadly characterised as children active in defining problems and children participating on an equal footing appeared to assist practitioners in being prepared to promote children’s active involvement in defining problems and finding solutions. The analysis suggested that how practitioners think about children is an important area of enquiry and highlighted the shift in thinking required to develop more effective participatory practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Good practice for safeguarding children by health and social care means having the individual confidence to take considered risks in practice and the institutional support that encourages it. Yet, this is not easy to achieve or widely promoted across health and social care organisations. The pressure to ‘get things right’ very much dominates health and social care and this perpetuates a risk aversive culture. Risk measurement regimes based on actuarial methods influences the ‘get things right’ emphasis, with a focus on certainty and knowing ‘for sure’, leaving socially determined or socially constructed notions of risk at the practice margins. In an everyday practical sense, this can mean families being subjected to professional definitions about risk and need, rather than them being part of a working relationship where risk definitions are worked out together. In this paper, we argue that definitions of risk are best conceptually and practically mapped at the interface of health and social care practice, with families, to strengthen the case analysis and social work plans about what needs to happen next. We show how we have adopted the ‘signs of safety’ approach at Tower Hamlets to do just that. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper has three principal purposes. The first involves locating the ‘politics of touch’ as related to coaching within Noddings' theory of pedagogical caring. Noddings' framework is presented not so much as a prescription of ‘good practice’, but as a potential way to raise the profile and somewhat problematise the debate about touching as a part of coaching. The second objective of the paper is to further the case for visual methods, and in particular photography, as a means to address and explore the complexities and nuance of touch in pedagogical, more precisely, coaching settings. The focus here draws attention to the constrained and spontaneous nature of existence. Here, a debate is also presented both about the often assumed ‘realist’ nature of the data and on the use of precise theoretical explanations to clarify and rationalise them. The final goal relates to presenting some images of coaches' practice as related to both caring and touching. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the insecurities and discursive moral panics elicited by the discussion of intergenerational touch in education, and their subsequent manifestation in ‘classroom panopticism’. In a number of contexts, public hysteria has grown around the interaction between adult and child, and whether this interaction stays within the narrow parameters of a generally consensual ‘acceptability’. Crossing these boundaries carries grave consequences for those deemed to be exploiting their position and this has had significant implications for the self-identity of practitioners. This climate of preventative fear has also served to manipulate regulatory method, realigning conceptions of practitioner independence. Drawing on interviews with Physical Education teachers in English secondary schools, and applying a Foucauldian theoretical framework, with particular reference to his interpretation of panopticism, this paper investigates the conceptual transformation of contemporary education. Whilst school spaces were once representative of stability, in which roles were clearly defined, the hierarchical dynamic has changed. The teacher, who previously presided with relative professional freedom and autonomy, is now subject to myriad pressures associated with ‘appropriate’ behaviour and the avoidance of any ‘problematic’ interactional incident. Foucault's treatment of panopticism is apt here, as teachers must conduct themselves with an acceptance that they are now governed by an unpredictable yet persistent practical scrutiny. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Informed agreement to participate in research is a critical element of ethical practice. When researching with children, opportunities to provide informed agreement are often afforded to adult gatekeepers, yet not necessarily extended to the children involved. This paper reports an approach to engaging with children in research, emphasising strategies to facilitate their informed, and ongoing, assent. As part of a research project seeking children’s perspectives of their local community, researchers developed assent and information forms for children and young people. The aim of these forms was to promote discussion of children’s research rights, including the right to choose whether or not they engaged in the research. Within the broader research project, 130 children aged 4–12 years provided feedback about the forms and discussed how the forms influenced their participation in the research project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a conversation-analysis case study of interaction between a child with cerebral palsy and an adult using a computer-based voice output communication aid (VOCA) device with a touch-sensitive screen-input system. Data was collected from video recordings of everyday activities at school. The public nature of the VOCA-mediated turn construction process (hand movements towards the screen, on-screen folder navigation, synthetic speech) displays the projection of the turn under way and its possible continuations. The adult interlocutor orients to such projections when contributing to the topic of the ongoing turn and when initiating repair on its topical development. Contributing may activate the AAC user's further involvement in the ongoing turn, while repair may restrict the AAC user's influence on the topical progression. The findings are relevant for clinical assessment and intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The infantilization of older adults seems morally deplorable whereas very young children are appropriate recipients of such treatment. Children, we argue, are not mentally capable of acting autonomously and reasoning clearly. However, we have difficulty reconciling this justification with the fact that many of the elders whom we respect are mentally deficient in those very same ways. In this paper, I try to make sense of this asymmetry between our justifications for infantilizing the young and our conviction that our elders ought to be respected. I argue that our intuitions against adult infantilization are non-consequentialist (i.e., deontic). I consider several candidates for the deontic factor that might explain the asymmetry of our judgments and practices. I argue that a very specific kind of dignity (one that is socially constructed and reified) grounds our disparate judgments and treatments of very young and very old persons with similar needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a unique intergenerational project that the authors propose to be considered under the banner of “shared site” programs. The Meadows School Project shares important features with many intergenerational shared site programs. Its goals to build community, dispel stereotypes, and increase understanding and meaning in relationships between generations are achieved through intensive, high-quality interaction sustained over time. This case study highlights benefits and challenges in line with those noted in other studies of intergenerational shared sites and underscores the importance of further research on important environmental, community, program, and policy dimensions to inform theory and best practice guidelines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Childhood is a category whose construction requires ongoing geographically specific and historically contingent projects. One important project is the legal definition between child and adult in cases of trying youth as adults, where youth are considered to be unchildlike children and unsuitable for the juvenile court. In this paper, I trace the unchildlike child in the construction of the Progressive juvenile court at the beginning of the twentieth century. Debate and contestation over the unchildlike child in the Progressive era creates a moral cartography of the city drawing upon raced, classed, gendered, and heterosexist understandings of democratic life, the attributes of childhood, the creation of the family, and the responsibilities of neighborhood communities. Together, these spaces work to recreate the geographies of inclusion and exclusion in the modern city, and craft the boundaries of childhood that continue to shape the juvenile court today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]